Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) has launched its aquaculture Feed Solutions Toolkit that provides seafood companies the tools and resources to make sustainability commitments, assess the risks associated with their feed ingredients and implement improvements.
The toolkit aims to help companies tackle the climate change, habitat, and biodiversity risks associated with aquaculture feed. It combines over 80 tools, standards, initiatives, and platforms from multiple organizations, along with guidance and case studies on practical steps to improve feed sustainability.
“We want all seafood companies to include aquaculture feed in their sustainability commitments and policies because feed poses significant environmental and climate challenges,” says Paul Bulcock, aquaculture information manager at SFP. “Addressing this issue, along with continued improvements in farm planning and management, will enhance aquaculture’s role as a low-carbon, environmentally sustainable, and socially responsible food source.”
Aquaculture now accounts for more than half of the world’s seafood, by volume, and is critical to meeting increasing global demand for seafood while offering a low-carbon alternative to other animal products. However, aquaculture feed remains a significant climate change and environmental hotspot, with risks such as land conversion, deforestation, overexploitation, pollution, and bycatch from the production or capture of feed ingredients. It is estimated that aquaculture’s use of compound feed ingredients is responsible for up to 70-80% of its carbon impact and up to 90% of certain environmental impacts such as land and water use.
The Toolkit Major suppliers and retailers, including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Thai Union, and Walmart, have already set goals and targets to improve the sustainability of the feed used to produce their products or the ingredients it contains.
The Sustainable Fisheries partnership said that, while multiple tools, standards, and improvement initiatives have already been developed to help the seafood supply chain meet the challenge of feed sustainability, the Feed Solutions Toolkit represents the first time these resources have been curated in one place.
The Feed Solutions Toolkit was produced with funding support from the Walmart Foundation for the project titled, “Addressing the Carbon and Biodiversity Impacts of Aquaculture by Motivating Responsible Aquaculture Practices at Scale.”
